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An   Addr^^ss    Before    the 
Sub-Com^nittee   of   t>^»    •'Boston 
School    Board 

By 
jV.P.    Atkinson 


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i; 


^  : 


■i^-;-.  ■ 

'^  ^  ■ 

THE    UliirANJZATION    OF   HlLrll    ISUliUUL.^. 


AN    ADDRESS 


BEJ-OKF.  THE 


SUB-COMMITTEE 


BOaTUN    SCJIOOL    BOAKD, 


APPOINTED  TO  CONSIDER  THE  SUBJECT 
OF  A  REORGANIZATION  OF  THE  BOSTON  HIGH  SCHOOLS. 


BY     W.     P.     ATKINSON, 

Professor  of  English  Literitlure  in  the  ^fassachu setts  Institute  of  Technoloq 


BOSTON: 

ALFRED    MUDGE  &  SON,  CITY   PRINTERS,  U    SCHOOL    STREET. 

1870. 


3  30fc 


O 

M 

s 


^(o/M 


OF 


PROF.  W.  P.  ATKINSON. 


I  had  the  privilege  of  hearing  only  the  closing  remarks,  Mr. 
Chairman,  of  the  young  gentleman  who  has  just  sat  down,  and  I 
cannot  better  begin  what  I  have  to  say  on  the  subject,  than 
by  giving  the  feeling  which  those  remarks,  so  far  as  I  have 
heard  them,  occasioned  in  me.  I  felt  very  much  as  I 
listened  to  his  argument,  as  if  I  were  listening  to  an  earnest 
plea  in  behalf  of  the  establishment  of  a  manufactory  of  bows 
and  arrows  in  these  days  of  Sharp's  rifles  and  six-shooting 
revolvers.  No  less  preposterous,  though  I  may  have  misun- 
derstood him,  appears  to  me  to  be  an  argument  in  this  year  of 
our  Lord,  1869,  in  favor  of  basing  the  liberal  education  of 
the  public  High  School  of  Boston  mainly  or  wholly  upon  the 
study  of  the  dead  languages  of  Greece  and  Rome.  The  intrinsic 
value  of  those  languages  in  their  proper  place  and  time  is  but  a 
small  part  of  the  question  before  us.  The  question  before  us  to- 
night is  in  regard  to  the  proper  course  of  study  for  a  particular 
class  of  schools,  not  the  question  of  the  abstract  merit  of  the 
classics.  My  own  opinion  is  that  if  any  instruments  of  mental 
culture  are  preeminently  unsuited  to  the  purpose  we  have  in  view, 
that  is  to  say,  the  mental  training  of  this  class  of  pupils,  it  is  pre- 
cisely those,  the  employment  of  which  the  young  gentleman  has 
been  so  fei'vently  advocating.  In  my  view  the  reason  why  our 
High  Schools  have  to  so  large  an  extent  failed  to  meet  the  wants 
of  the  community,  has  been  precisely  that  heretofore  they  have  de- 
pended so  much  on  these  instrumentalities.     The  change  which 


before  all  others  I  would  advocate,  would  be,  not  to  drop  them 
entirely  from  our  High  School  course  of  study,  but  to  place  them 
where  they  belong,  in  a  position  wholly  subordinate  to  those  more 
important  studies  required  by  the  majority  of  the  pupils,  and  the 
demands  of  the  community  and  the  age  in  which  we  live. 

I  believe  it  may  safely  be  affirmed  in  the  first  place,  that  the 
old  plea  that  the  study  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  classics  has  a 
certain  mysterious  disciplinary  value  for  the  mind  beyond  thai  of 
any  other  studies,  so  that  they  are  to  be  used  as  a  sort  of  prelim- 
inary whetstone  to  sharpen  all  boys'  wits  upon  before  they  can  suc- 
cessfully begin  those  other  studies  which  are  to  be  at  the  foundation 
of  their  life-work,—  I  believe  that  this  educational  theory  may  now 
be  ranked  among  exploded  superstitions.*     Every  study,  it  is  now 
beginning  to  be  seen,  is  a  mental  discipline  just  so  far  as  it  is  pur- 
sued thoroughly  and  by  proper  scientific  methods  ;  and  it  is  begin- 
ning to  be  seen,  further,  that  the  study  of  the  classics  themselves, 
if  pursued  as  they  usually  are  in  our  schools,  by  most  bungling 
and  unscientific  methods,  has  been  furnishing   one  of  the  worst 
systems  of  mental  discipline  that  ever  was  devised,  when  we  take 
into  view   the  mental  wants  of  its  recipients,  the   hundreds   of 
young  men  who  have  heretofore  received  this  pretence  of  a  liberal 
education.   Without  denying,  therefore,  that  when  properly  studied 
the  languages  of  Greece  and  Rome  may  furnish  the  foundation  for 
a  liberal  education,  the  two  questions  we  have  to  ask  ourselves 
are  :   first,  whether  as  usually  studied  among  us  they  do  furnish  a 
liberal  education  at  all,  and  secondly,  whether,  even  if  studied  in 
better  ways  and  to  better  purpose,  they  would  furnish  the  liberal 
education  best  suited  to  the  wants  of  the  majority  of  lads  attend- 
ing the  public  High  Schools  of  Boston. 

I  will  pass  by  the  first  question  with  the  simple  remark  that  I 
think  that  the  classical  instruction  of  America,  taken  at  its  actual 
average,  and  viewed  in  its  actual  results,  furnishes  simply  an 
example  of  wasted  time,  and  misdirected  energy.  The  average 
classical  education  of  American  boys  is  shallow,  superficial,  and 

*  See  this  point  well  handled  in  Prof.  D'Arcy  Thompson's  wise  and 
witty  little  book,  "  The  Day-Drearas  of  a  Schoolmaster." 


unsound,  for  it  is  merely  a  cramming  to  meet  the  exigencies 
of  a  college  entrance  examination.  It  is  conducted  by  teachers 
who  ai'C  not  themselves,  as  a  rule,  in  any  sense  good  classical  schol- 
ars ;  it  is  pursued  by  the  boys  with  no  hearty  living  interest  in 
their  work,  but  simply  under  the  artificial  stimulus  of  fear  of  an 
arbitrary  examination  ;  it  is  abandoned  when  that  stimulus  ceases 
to  act,  leaving  no  fruit  of  sound  or  valuable  knowledge  behind  it. 
The  classical  education  of  vast  numbers  of  our  college  boys  is  a 
transparent  sham.  I  should  be  almost  afraid  to  give  my  opinion 
as  to  the  per-cent  of  real  classical  scholars  who  are  the  only  fruit 
of  so  much  wasted  time  and  opportunity. 

These  facts  in  regard  to  our  so-called  classical  education  are  so 
patent  that  I  imagine  they  will  hardly  be  disputed.  If  it  were  not 
for  that  prevalent  superstition  I  just  mentioned,  that  in  spite  of  its 
notorious  failure  in  producing  real  fruit,  ihere  is  yet  some  sort 
of  mysterious  disciplinary  value  in  all  this  abortive  labor,  they 
would  long  ago  have  challenged  the  attention  of  a  community  not 
very  tolerant  of  useless  work.  Their  existence  to-da}^,  and  the  hold 
the  sj'stem  has  upon  the  community,  are  a  striking  evidence  of  the 
power  of  old  tradition  in  maintaining  an  antiquated  method  long 
after  it  has  ceased  to  have  any  real  efficiency.  I  think  the  time  is 
coming  when  it  will  appear  amazing  and  almost  beyond  belief,  that 
in  this  age  and  this  nation,  the  only  road  to  admission  to  our  highest 
seminaries  of  learning,  was  through  an  absolute  devotion  during 
six  or  more  of  the  best  years  of  boyish  life  to  so  barren  a  study 
of  two  dead  languages  of  antiquity  ;  Avhile  young  men  were  freely 
admitted  in  absolute  ignorance,  so  far  as  school  preparation  was 
concerned  or  college  examination  had  influence,  of  everything  that 
constitutes  the  real  knowledge  of  the  nineteenth  century.  "We 
Lave  a  noble  language  and  a  noble  literature  of  our  own,  and  they 
are  not  examined  in  these,  and  consequently  arrive  at  the  age  of 
seventeen  with  a  most  contemptible  and  inadequate  knowledge  of 
their  mother  tongue.  A  vast  domain  of  scientific  knowledge  has 
been  conquered  and  annexed  to  the  world's  wisdom,  since  the 
time  when  Greek  and  Latin  were  almost  its  sole  representatives  ; 
they  are  not  examined  in  it,  and  consequently  they  arrive  at  the 
age  of  seventeen  with  almost  no  knowledge  of  that;  so  that  just 


as  Gibbon  said  in  iiis  day,  tliat  "  a  finished  scholar  may  emerge 
from  the  head  of  "Westminster  or  Eton,  in  total  ignorance  of  the 
business  and  conversation  of  English  gentlemen  in  the  latter  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century,"  it  may  be  said  of  college  preparation  in 
our  day  that  a  young  man  may  enter  an  American  college  at  the 
age  of  seventeen  in  almost  total  ignorance,  so  far  as  his  school  is 
concerned,  of  everything  which  will  fit  him  for  the  duties  of  an 
American  citizen  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

If  the  evil  were  confined  to  the  small  minority  of  our  young 
men  who  enter  our  colleges,  it  would  be  bad  enough ;  but  its  influ- 
ence extends  far  more  widely.  It  perv^erts  our  whole  public  school 
system.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  at  any  given  time  it  is  only 
a  very  small  percentage  of  the  pupils  of  one  sex  in  any  given 
High  School  who  are  preparing  for  college,  the  whole  course  of  study 
of  that  High  School  is  adjusted  to  meet  their  wants.  The  best 
energies  of  the  best  teacher  are  usually  consumed  in  their  instruc- 
tion, and  the  teacher  has  been  selected  with  special  reference  to 
that  work,  and  being  himself  the  prodact  of  the  system,  is  quite 
unfitted  for  any  other ;  so  that  the  wants  of  the  great  mass  of  the 
pupils  are  postponed,  and  their  iustruciion  left  in  inferior  hands. 
If  the  city  is,  like  your  own,  large  enouo-h  to  jnaintain  two  schools, 
such  is  the  prestige. of  the  classical  course,  that  a  merely  English 
school  is  looked  upon  as  of  quite  inferior  value,  the  term  liberal  is 
denied  it,  and  the  chief  function  of  the  school  is  .supposed  to  be  to 
furnish  boys  with  a  sufl3cient  knowledge  of  geop'aphy,  arithmetic 
and  book-keeping  to  make  good  candidates  for  the  counting  room. 
Whatever  higher  discipline  there  is,  comes  exclasivt.  ly  in  the  hard 
dry  form  of  abstract  mathematics. 

This  state  of  things  is  the  more  absurd  inasmuch  as  ^be  -college 
boy,  though  put  through  this  pedantic  antiquated  drill  all  through 
the  best  years  of  his  boyhood,  in  order  merely  to  gain  admission  to 
college,  finds  after  his  admission  that  a  modern  spirit  has  penetrated 
our  best  colleges.  He  then  has  a  free  choice  given  liim  between 
classical  learning,  and  the  pursuit  of  many  branches  of  modern 
science  and  modern  literature ;  but  when  he  turns  es.gerly,  ^s  the 
whole  spirit  of  modern  life  leads  him  to  turn,  to  th  ose  sciences 
and   literatures,  he  has    to   sigh  in  vain   for  tlie  pre  cious  ^-eai's 


of  boyhooil  now  gone  by,  in  which  he  might  have  laid  the 
proper  foundation  for  such  knowledge.  He  finds  himself  with 
senses  untrained,  with  habits  of  inductive  reasoning  to  be  be- 
gun, ignorant  of  his  mother  tongue,  with  all  the  foundations  yet  to 
be  laid.  He  finds  himself  a  man  in  j^ears,  and  a  child  in  English 
and  scientific  training.  What  wonder  that  he  so  often  goes  back 
in  despair  to  his  Latin  and  Greek  vocables  of  which  he  does  know 
a  little,  and  thus  furnishes,  in  his  disgust  at  unfamiliar  studies,  a 
cheap  triumph  to  the  pedant. 

I  maintain  that  from  beginning  to  end,  Mr.  Chairman,  this  is 
all  wrong,  and  that  so  long  as  we  continue  the  effort  to  base  a  liberal 
American  education  solely  on  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages,  we 
shall  have  the  same  melancholy  failure  For  the  higher  American 
education  thus  far  is  a  failure,  inasmuch  as,  considered  as  a  system, 
it  produces  neither  good  scholars  nor  good  scientific  men.  Our  good 
scholars  are  few  and  far  between,  and  our  men  of  science  and  our 
men  of  practice  are  self-educated.  The  glory  of  our  American 
system  thus  far  is  that  it  teaches  all  the  people  to  read  and  write.* 
That  is  a  great  glory  and  I  would  not  disparage  it ;  but  the  time 
bas  come  when  we  need  something  more,  and  I  maintain  that  for 
the  majority  of  our  young  people  that  is  absolutely  not  to  be  found 
in  the  direction  of  an  exclusive  study  of  Latin  and  Greek,  but  in 
.■quite  another  direction.  That  we  shall  still  need  classical  scholars 
I  cheerfully  admit.  So  we  shall  still  need  Hebrew  and  Chaldee 
amJ  Sanskrit  scholars.  So  we  shall  have,  I  hope,  students  of  the 
JEsklmo  dialects  and  the  languages  of  New  Mexico.  But  Ameri- 
can popular  education  will  never  be  based  on  the  stud}'^  of 
Eskffemo.     As  little,  in  my  opinion,  can  it  be  based  on  the  study 

*  A  wi'iter  in  a  recent  number  of  the  English  Saturday  Eeview,  discussing 
-the  subject  of  English  popular  education,  says  :  "No  one  can  have  the 
,  niost  superficial  acquaintance  witli  the  mental  condition  of  our  large  mid- 
•  dle  classes,  without  perceiving  a  gi'eat  and  widening  gulf  which  separates 

reading  fix)m  education.  Academies  and  the  three  Rs  have  achieved  at 
: least  the  very  definite  "results"  of  showing  that  the  outside  and  merely 

mechanical  appliances  of  education  may  be  brought  to  a  very  respectable 
,  degree  of  perfection  without  any  corresponding  development  of  intellectual 
:povi'er."  'A  better  description  could  hardly  be  given  of  the  fatal  weakness 
<>9f  our  presont  methods  of  public  school  instruction. 


6 


of  Greek,  however  wide  apart  those  two  hmguages  may  be  in  poiut 
of  absolute  value. 

In  saying  this  I  am  by  no  means  arguing  as  the  advocate  of 
"what  is  called  a  utilitarian  as  contradistinguished  from  a  liberal 
education.  I  distinctly  recognize  the  existence  of  an  ideal  liberal 
education  as  the  proper  aim  of  all  our  educational  efforts.  The 
question  for  me  is,  what  constitute  the  proper  ingredients  of  that 
ideal  liberal  education  for  an  Amei'ican  in  this  nineteenth  century  ? 
If  we  can  answer  that  we  shall  have  a  clew  to  guide  us  in  laying 
out  a  course  of  study  for  a  Boston  High  School. 

Now  in  regard  to  this  phrase,  liberal  education,  I  Xv^y  down  two 
principles,  —  that  its  essence  does  not  consist  in  the  mere  capacity 
to  utter  any  shibboleth,  whether  Greek,  Latin  or  Hebrew,  but  that 
the  essence  of  liberal  education  consists  in  symmetrical  mental 
development.  Any  course  of  study  that  gives  that  is  a  liberal 
course  of  study  ;  any  course  that  does  not  is  illiberal ;  and  so  far 
from  its  being  the  peculiar  monopoly  of  any  particular  course, 
many  courses  or  sets  of  studies,  mingled  in  many  various  propor- 
tions, can  give  it  —  proportions  to  be  varied  according  to  special 
circumstances  and  wants  and  occasions.  For,  further,  I  maintain 
that  though  a  course  or  method  of  study  may  be  useful  which  is 
not  liberal,  no  course  of  study  can  be  liberal  which  is  not  useful,  — 
useful  not  in  the  narrow,  but  in  the  high  and  noble  sense  of  that 
much-abused  word  ;  and  accordingly  I  find  that  the  most  illiberally 
educated  of  all  men  is  a  classical  pedant,  for  of  all  men  he  is  the 
most  useless. 

But  when  we  have  once  admitted  this  idea  of  usefulness  even 
into  our  idea  of  a  liberal  education,  instead  of  stigmatizing  it  as 
"  mere  utilitarianism,"  we  have  to  ask  ourselves  "  useful  for 
what  ?"  And  I  answer  that  the  aim  of  an  American  education 
sj'stem  should  be  to  make  a  generation  of  liberally  educated  Amer- 
ican citizens,  men  and  likewise  women  ;  men  and  women,  that  is, 
equipped  with  the  knowledge  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  not  of 
the  ninth  ;  to  act  the  part  of  free,  intelligent,  self-governing  human 
beings,  and  to  do  the  work  which  their  country  and  generation 
set  before  them.  There  is  no  absolute  ideal  education,  good  for 
all  times  and  places.     You  want  a  live  man  or  woman  as  the  pro- 


duct  of  your  education,  not  an  abstraction,  nor  a  member  of  an 
idle  cultivated  "  class."  The  very  idea  of  a  higher  education  in 
this  country  must  be  something  that  all  can  aspire  to,  though  the 
time  may  never  arrive  when  all  shall  reach  it.  The  idea  at  the 
foundation  of  a  classical  education  is  an  exclusive  idea,  —  it  is  a 
class  education.  Now  the  theory  of  our  institutions  admits  of  no 
such  idea  as  that  of  an  idle,  or  useless,  or  privileged  class.  If 
Greek,  therefoi-e,  or  any  other  study  claims  to  enter  our  curriculum, 
it  must  be  on  the  ground  of  some  use  that  it  subserves,  material 
or  spiritual,  and  only  so  far  as  it  subserves  such  use,  and  just  in 
proportion  to  its  importance  in  this  point  of  view  must  be  its  pro- 
portionate weight  as  an  ingredient. 

Is  it  not  plain,  therefore,  that  Greek  and  Latin  as  ingredients  in 
the  liberal  education  of  literary  men  and  philologists  —  and  I 
would  be  the  last  to  underrate  the  value  of  such  men  —  is  one 
thing ;  Greek  and  Latin  as  ingredients  in  the  equally  liberal,  that 
is,  equally  symmetrical,  education  of  a  vast  majority  of  well  edu- 
cated men,  must  be  quite  another  thing  ?  My  conception  of  a  liber- 
ally educated  American  people,  my  conception  of  an  educated 
republic  of  the  future,  a  republic  really  educated  by  institutions  of 
its  own  growth,  the  product  of  its  own  social  organization,  not 
borrowed  from  Europe  or  the  Middle  Ages,  must  include  liberally 
educated  merchants,  farmers,  manufacturers,  mechanics,  engineers, 
and  all  the  rest ;  and  my  conception  of  their  liberal  education  is, 
that  inasmuch  as  it  embraces  the  element  of  usefulness,  it  makes 
them  good  merchants,  farmers,  mechanics,  engineers,  just  as  my 
conception  of  a  liberally  educated  philologist  or  lawyer  is,  that  it 
makes  him  a  good  philologist  or  a  good  lawyer  ;  and  that  however 
varied  our  courses  of  liberal  training  may  become,  they  will  all  agree 
in  this,  that  they  will  all  equally  conduce  towards  making  culti- 
vated men  and  women  and  good  citizens. 

If  we  do  not  keep  such  an  ideal  as  this  in  view  in  the  manage- 
ment of  our  public  schools,  we  may  as  well  give  up  the  thought  of 
national  education  altogether,  and  leave  learning  to  be  still,  as 
heretofore,  the  monopoly  of  privileged  classes  or  privileged  profes- 
sions, while  the  masses  shall  still  content  themselves  with  reading 
their  catechisms.     But  while  privilege,  and  monopoly,  and  protec- 


8 

tion  arc  fast  passing  away  from  all  other  spheres  of  hnman  activity, 
and  while  in  England,  the  very  cradle  of  this  exclusive  system,  they 
are  vanishing  as  the  people  advance  to  power,  are  we  to  present  the 
absurd  spectacle  of  a  half-educated  republic  superstitiously  cling- 
ing to  the  skirts  of  a  system  repudiated  in  the  home  which  gave  it 
birth? 

Looking  at  the  subject  from  this  point  of  view,  when  we  come  to 
ask  ourselves  what  ought  to  be  the  ingredients  which  should  enter 
into  the  course  of  study  of  Boston  High  School  boys  and  girls,  we 
must  first  take  a  general  survey  of  all  studies  which  can  possibly  be 
pursued  by  boys  and  girls  at  the  particular  period  of  their  education 
embraced  by  a  High  School  course,  and  we  must  combine  these  in 
such  proportions  as  best  suit  the  wants  of  the  classes  embraced  in 
these  particular  schools,  and  no  others.  Now,  Mr.  Chairman,  if  I 
were  to  say  briefly  that  this  object  might  be  attained  in  a  rough 
way  by  exactly  inverting  the  order  of  studies  as  at  present  pursued 
in  the  Boston  High  Schools  I  think  I  should  not  be  very  far  wrong. 
At  present  the  Boston  Latin  School  is  the  most  prominent,  and  in 
its  course  of  study  the  two  subjects  Greek  and  Latin  may  almost 
be  said  to  swallow  up  the  rest.  English  and  modern  languages, 
mathematics  and  science,  and  the  fine  arts,  are  all  subordinate,  and 
so  subordinate  that  some  of  these  subjects  may  practically  be  said 
to  have  no  place  at  all.  The  whole  strength  of  the  most  prominent 
school  in  the  city  may  practically  be  said  to  be  engaged  in  prepar- 
ing a  mere  handful  of  boys  for  the  narrow  and  antiquated  college 
entrance  examination,  and  the  course  of  study  of  the  whole  of  the 
school  is  almost  cntirel}'  governed  by  this  paramount  consideration, 
"We  turn  to  the  other  High  School  for  boys,  a  school  which  ought 
equally  and  in  the  truest  sense  to  be  a  school  of  "  liberal"  learn- 
ing, and  we  find  it  degraded  in  public  estimation  almost  to  the 
level  of  a  "  Business  College." 

Even  if  I  adopted  the  vulgar  and  generally  received  educational 
theory  that  there  are  two  distinct  styles  of  education,  a  "  liberal," 
with  classics  for  a  foundation,  and  a  "  utilitarian,"  with  arithmetic, 
book-keeping,  etc.,  as  a  basis,  I  still  might  argue  that  having  regard 
to  the  number  of  recipients,  the  latter  course  would  for  Boston 
public  school  boys  outweigh  the  former  in  importance  a  hundred 


9 


to  one  ;  and  that  though  it  might  be  incumbent  on  a  wealthy  city 
like  Boston  to  make  proper  provision  for  the  preparation  of  a 
handful  of  her  boys  who  wish  to  go  to  College,  yet  it  is  a  gross 
abuse  to  have  the  course  of  study  of  hundreds  of  others  who  never 
go  there  bent  from  its  true  direction,  and  the  resources  of  her 
most  expensive  school  all  employed  for  this  subordinate  object. 
Even  on  the  most  favorable  view,  the  Boston  Latin  School  as  at 
present  organized  has  a  prominence  in  her  system  which  cannot 
possibly  be  justified.  For  though  I  should  exalt  the  value  of  a 
classical  over  a  utilitarian  course  of  study  as  extravagantly  as  the 
most  bigoted  advocate  of  the  classics,  yet  I  think  even  he  will  not 
venture  to  estimate  very  highly  the  value  of  a  mere  smattering 
of  classical  learning,  which  is  all  that  the  majority  of  the  boys 
even  of  the  Latin  School  ever  get  —  that  majority,  I  mean,  which 
never  reaches  college.  I  say  it  with  all  respect  to  the  Head-Mas- 
ter, of  whose  own  classical  learning  I  have  a  high  appreciation. 
It  is  not  true  in  such  a  case  as  this,  that,  as  we  say,  half  a  loaf  is 
better  than  no  bread.  Half  a  journey,  when  one  never  reaches 
one's  destination,  is  sheer  waste  of  time.  The  instruction  of  the 
Latin  School,  if  it  were  ever  so  good  of  its  kind  —  and  I  will  not 
enter  into  that  question — is  in  the  main  wasted,  because  it  is 
given  to  recipients  who  can  make  no  use  of  it.  It  is  like  equip- 
ping pedestrians  with  spurs,  or  travellers  by  laud  with  nicely  built 
wherries. 

In  putting  the  case  thus  I  have  been  assuming  the  correctness 
of  the  distinction  made  by  the  advocates  of  classical  studies.  But 
I  have  myself  no  faith  whatever  in  the  reality  of  this  antithesis 
between  "  liberal "  and  "  utilitarian."  No  course  of  study  deserves 
for  a  moment  to  be  called  liberal  that  does  not  directly  serve  some 
noble  use  ;  and  on  the  other  hand  the  most  utilitarian  of  so-called 
practical  studies  is  not  pursued  as  it  should  be  so  long  as  it  is  not 
pursued  in  truly  "  liberal "  ways.  The  antithesis  is  a  wholly  false 
and  misleading  one. 

If  we  turn  from  these  erroneous  popular  views  and  look  at  the 

subject  in  the  light  of  a  truer  theory,  we  shall  find  that  there  is  one 

element  of  a  true  sj'mmetrical  education  represented  by  the  present 

classical  course  and  another  by  the  utilitarian  course,  and  that 

2 


10 


both  are  equally  necessary  to  our  idea  of  a  good  education,  and 
that  both  suffer  by  being  divorced  from  one  another.  Dividing  all 
studies  broadly  into  two  divisions,  those  relating  to  matter 
and  those  relating  to  mind,  physical  and  metaph3'sical,  or  by  what- 
ever other  terms  we  distinguish  the  world  without  from  the  world 
within  us,  I  find  that  the  classical  course  represents  the  latter,  but 
represents  it  at  the  present  day  in  a  wholly  antiquated  and  inad- 
equate manner.  Who  would  deny  for  a  moment  the  importance  of 
language-training  as  a  leading  factor  in  any  true  scheme  of  edu- 
cation ?  But  who  at  this  day  can  defend  the  old-fashioned  and 
exclusive  teaching  of  Greek  and  Latin  during  the  period  of 
boyhood  as  the  true  representatives  any  longer  of  language- 
training  in  a  scheme  of  popular  education?  They  are  not 
any  longer  even  the  representatives  of  our  higher  philology. 
With  one  of  the  noblest  languages  that  ever  existed  for  our 
mother-tongue,  and  with  modern  languages  which  are  be- 
coming almost  a  necessity  of  every-day  life,  and  with  boys,  the 
majority  of  whom  have  but  scant  time  to  acquire  these,  why  do  we 
persist  in  wasting  some  of  the  best  years  of  their  lives  in  the  study 
of  Greek  grammar?  Why  not  leave  it  to  the  scholars  who  will 
make  some  good  use  of  it,  and  to  the  literary  men  of  whose  train- 
ing it  forms  a  proper  part?  And  on  the  other  hand,  why  on  the 
plea  that  Latin  is  taught  in  the  Latin  School,  deprive  the  boys  of 
the  English  High  School  of  that  knowledge  of  Latin  which  is  neces- 
sary to  them  for  the  right  understanding  of  English  ?  Grant  that 
a  few  boys  will  still  need  to  be  crammed  to  meet  the  absurd  and 
perverse  demands  of  the  present  college  examination  —  let  them 
be  relegated  to  a  room  by  themselves  and  to  the  hands  of  a  com- 
petent crammer ;  but  I  do  not  see  why  the  language-training  of 
the  great  majority  of  the  Latin  School  boys  should  in  any  material 
respect  differ  from  the  language-training  of  the  English  High 
School  boys.  Both  in  my  judgment  might  profitably  be  taught  at 
least  a  minimum  of  Latin  ;  both  should  be  taught  their  mother- 
tongue  to  some  good  purpose,  though  they  are  not  now:  both 
should  learn  French ;  both  might  profitably  learn  German  in  less 
time  than  is  now  wasted  on  Greek.  And  all  should  engage  in 
those  ethical  studies  which  belong  with  language-training.     They 


11 


should  read  History  and  Biography  intelligently,  not  merely  be 
crammed  with  names  and  dates  ;  they  should  understand  the  laws 
and  constitution  of  their  country  ;  they  should  learn  m  school  the 
fundamental  principles  of  political  economy  and  social  science. 
All  these  things  are  either  utterly  neglected  or  most  inefficiently 
taught ;  yet  we  cannot  have  such  a  thing  as  a  sound  popular 
education  without  them. 

If  we  turn  now  to  the  other  great  division  of  studies  we  find 
that  it  equally  suffers  from  this  unnatural  divorce.  As  Nature 
herself  has  interposed  an  obstacle  to  the  barren  study  of  words 
by  ordaining  that  before  words  there  shall  first  come  the  things 
words  stand  for,  thiiigs  material  as  well  as  things  spiritual,  and  as  it 
is  found  that  in  the  natural  development  of  the  youthful  mind,  the 
study  of  things  material  comes  before  the  study  of  abstractions,  and 
must  be  its  foundation,  it  follows  that  the  study  of  the  elements  of 
the  natural  and  physical  sciences  are  not  specialties  to  be  shut  up 
in  a  few  advanced  technical  schools,  but  should  form  just  as  much  a 
part  of  all  education  as  language  itself,  —  nay,  that  language  itself 
is  utterly  barren  without  them,  as  witness  that  stultifying  study,  Eng- 
lish grammar,  as  now  taught  in  our  primary  and  grammar  schools. 
But,  Mr.  Chairman,  in  spite  of  this  fundamental  principle  of  all  good 
education,  what  do  you  suppose  would  be  the  result  of  an  exami- 
nation of  the  boys  now  in  the  Latin  School,  or  of  the  present  fresh- 
man class  in  Harvard  College,  in  the  elements  of  natural  and  phys- 
ical science  ?  I  think  it  would  be  a  very  melancholy  result  indeed  ; 
for  it  is  the  present  practice  of  our  schools  to  educate  candidates 
for  college  up  to  the  age  of  seventeen,  without  any  knowledge  ot 
the  world  they  live  in,  on  the  plea  that  the  college  does  not  require 
it,  and  they  can't  spare  time  from  their  Greek.  And  similarly  — 
and  here  I  do  not  speak  without  some  personal  experience  —  an 
examination  of  the  graduates  of  our  High  Schools  generally,  as  to 
their  knowledge  of  natural  history  and  natural  philosophy  as  well 
as  in  regard  to  their  appreciation  of  English  poetry  and  English 
literature,  and  the  amount  of  it  they  had  really  read  to  any  good 
purpose,  would  lead  to  some  startling  results,  and  might  diminish 
the  loudness  of  that  chorus  which  is  continually  rising  in  praise  of 
the  perfection  of  our  public  school  system. 


12 

But  I  am  not  satisfied  with  this  twofold  division  of  knowledge 
into  physical  and  metaphysical.  Properly  the  division  is  threefold, 
physical,  metaphysical  and  resthetic  ; —  Science,  Philosophy  (includ- 
ing Philology)  and  Art.  We  can  have  no  true  symmetrical  culture 
without  the  recognition  of  Art  as  an  essential  element  in  all  educa- 
tion that  is  worthy  of  the  name.  Physical  science  at  the  present 
day  may  be  left  to  maintain  her  own  ground  ;  she  needs  no  help 
when  all  the  strongest  tendencies  of  the  age  are  in  favor  of  giving 
us  even  an  extreme  and  disproportioned  bias  in  her  favor.  Our 
task  is  only  to  place  the  study  of  physical  science  in  its  proper 
place  in  our  school  curriculum,  and  I  would  place  its  beginnings 
very  early.  Philosophic  studies  will  never  lack  support  while  they 
furnish  such  appropriate  nutriment  to  the  acuteness  of  the  Yankee 
mind.  Perhaps  the  strange  reverence  our  people  show  for  the  prac- 
tice of  cramming  their  children  with  the  abstractions  of  grammar,  at 
an  age  when  they  are  quite  incapable  of  comprehending  them,  may 
be  traced  as  an  inheritance  from  the  training  —  and  it  was  their 
only  philosophic  training  —  which  our  grandfathers  received  in  the 
hair-splitting  m3'steries  of  Puritan  catechisms.  And  I  am  inclined 
to  trace  the  kindred  superstition  in  favor  of  employing  classical 
studies  as  the  sole  instrument  of  liberal  training  to  a  similar  source  ; 
that  it  was  because  the  dim  and  faint  conceptions  of  Greek  art 
thus  acquired  were  the  only  representatives  in  their  education,  of 
aesthetic  culture,  and  the  feeling  that,  spite  of  all  Puritan  prejudice, 
the  love  of  art  is  an  element  in  human  nature.  The  college  boy 
did  hear  of  Athens,  and  Pericles  and  Phidias,  did  read,  though 
usually  to  very  little  purpose,  his  Homer  and  his  Aeschylus,  and  did 
come  in  contact  with  perhaps  a  few  minds  who  had  read  them  with 
real  advantage.  This  told  at  least  for  something  —  for  how  little 
we  may  know  if  we  ask  ourselves  what  proportion  of  the  graduates 
of  Harvard  College,  in  the  past,  have  studied  the  Greek  classics  to 
such  good  purpose  as  really  to  have  entered  into  the  realm  of  clas- 
sic art  or  the  spirit  of  classic  poetry.* 

*  To  attempt  to  use  the  nice  processes  of  real  classical  culture  as  the 
chief  instrument  of  popular  education  is  much,  it  seems  to  me,  as  though 
one  were  to  employ  a  Eaphael  to  paint  signboards  :  and  hence  it  comes 
that  the  classical  education  of  the  one  Greek  mind  in  every  hundred  is 


13 

But  now  that  the  hatred  of  Art  which  sprung  from  Puritan  nar- 
rowness has  so  died  out  that  we  see  the  moet  puritanic  of  sects 
building  the  costliest  of  Gothic  churches  ;  when  we  are  beginning  to 
adorn  our  cities  at  least  with  bad  monuments  and  worse  statues  : 
and  on  the  other  hand  free  galleries  of  painting  and  sculpture  are 
beginning  to  be  collected,  to  teach  us  how  to  make  better  ;  when  a 
love  for  true  music  has  really  begun  to  develop  itself  among  us ; 
now  that  English  as  well  as  classic  poetry  is  thought  worthy  of 
study,  why  should  not  Art  be  recognized  directly  as  well  as  indi- 
rectly in  our  popular  education  ?  Boston  has  nobly  led  the  way 
by  making  vocal  music  a  fundamental  element  in  the  teaching  of 
all  her  public  schools,  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest.  I  hope  to 
see  her  take  another  step,  and  to  see  good  drawing  supplant  bad, 
and  the  art  of  drawing  recognized  as  quite  as  much  a  necessity 
and  little  of  a  luxury,  as  the  art  of  writing.  There  are  as  many 
born  artists  on  the  benches  of  the  humblest  primary  schools  to-day, 
as  in  the  most  exclusive  private  schools  of  the  wealthy  ;  and  on 
the  other  hand,  the  art  of  drawing  in  its  humbler  departments 
should  be  reckoned  as  much  a  necessity  for  the  young  mechanic  as 
the  art  of  reckoning.* 

To  do  these  great  subjects  justice,  Mr.  Chairman,  would  be 
to  write  a  treatise  on  Education.  The  main  remedy  that  I 
would  suggest  for  the  defects  in  the  course  of  study  of  the 
Boston  High  Schools  is  the  breaking  down  of  the  wall  that 
separates  them.  At  present  the  training  of  the  Latin  School 
is  narrow  and  pedantic,  and  of  the  English  High  School  cold, 
hard,  and  in  a  low  sense  utilitarian,  simply  for  want  of  an 
ingredient  which  each  might  supply  the  other.  It  is  prepos- 
terous that  the  Latin  School  boys  should  not  be  taught  science ; 

spoiled,  while  that  of  the  ninety-niue  others  who  need  something  else  is 
perverted ;  and  the  classics  are  trodden  la  the  mire  of  a  superflcial  teach- 
ing which  knows  of  Greek  and  Roman  Literature  nothing  but  the  husk,  and 
of  the  spirit  of  Greek  Art  nothing  at  all. 

*  See  on  the  subject  of  Art  as  a  factor  ia  Education  the  wise  words  of 
J.  S.  Mih,  in  his  St.  Andrews  address ;  and  see  also  a  book  which  deserves 
to  be  more  widely  known,  "  Hiatus,  the  Void  in  Modern  Education." 
London :  Macmillau,  18G9. 


14 


there  is  no  good  reason  why  the  English  School  boys  should  not 
feel  some  of  the  influence  which  true  classical  culture  gives.  Both 
should  assuredly  learn  their  mother  tongue  and  really  know  its 
literatuie.  Both  should  study  modern  History  and  the  political 
and  social  organization  of  the  world  they  live  in.  Both  should 
feel  the  liberalizing  influence  of  true  Art.  In  both  the  true 
period  must  be  found  when  abstract  grammatical  studies  should  be 
begun,  and  in  my  judgment  it  is  a  very  difierent  period  from  that 
at  which  they  are  begun  at  present.  I  think  that  no  boy's  language- 
training  will  sufier  if  the  abstract  study  of  grammar  should  be 
postponed  to  the  age  of  fourteen.  Let  him  be  left  till  that  age  to 
accumulate  ideas  and  to  learn  language  by  the  right  use  of  it.  No 
language  ever  yet  was  learned  as  early  or  as  well  as  it  might  be, 
which  was  begun  by  the  abstract  study  of  its  grammar.  The  reason 
why  our  children  do  not  learn  the  use  even  of  their  mother  tongue 
and  know  so  little  of  what  is  written  in  it,  is  because  their  energies 
are  consumed  in  a  futile  attempt  to  master  bad  treatises  on  its 
grammar  in  the  lower  schools  ;  in  precisely  the  same  way  that  nine- 
tenths  of  our  college  boj's  are  made  to  hate  the  ancient  classics  in 
the  upper  ones.* 

If  a  fusion  were  thus  made  of  the  ingredients  of  the  two  school 
courses,  and  then  if  school  studies  were  arra,uged  in  what 
all  enlightened  teachers  are  beginning  to  see  is  the  order  of 
nature  ;  and  if  at  the  same  time  there  should  be  made,  as  we  may 
perhaps  reasonably  hope  there  will,  a  change  in  the  character  of 
the  present  college  entrance  examination,  such  as  will  bring  it 
into  true  harmony  with  the  present  improved  course  of  college  study, 
the  conflict  which  now  exists  between  the  character  and  aims  of 
the  two  schools  would  almost  be  done  away,  and  I  see  not  wh}' 
one  institution  with  broad  and  liberal  aims  and  liberally  organized, 
with  a  man  at  its   head  of   the  broadest   and   most    liberal  cul- 

*  I  have  heard  it  remarked  by  a  business  man  that  in  nothing  were  busi- 
ness men  of  ability  so  deficient  as  in  the  faculty  of  expressing  their  ideas. 
The  remark  is  very  just;  but  if  the  teaching  of  English  were  properly  un- 
derstood in  our  public  schools  there  would  be  no  ground  for  such  com- 
plaint. The  English  language  is  precisely  what  is  not  taught  to  any  good 
purpose,  and  the  prevalent  classical  superstitions  arc  I  think  responsible  in 
a  great  measure  for  the  defect. 


15 

turo  tliat  could  anywhere  be  found,  would  not  serve  a  vastly 
better  purpof^e  than  two  constructed  upon  the  princii^les  of  a  nar- 
row and  antiquated  exclusiveness.  The  wants  of  the  minority  of 
boys  destined  for  college,  or  for  the  other  minoritj^  destined  for  a 
scientific  school,  need  in  such  a  school  come  into  no  conflict  with 
those  of  what  must  be  always  the  great  majority  of  pupils  ;  those, 
namely,  who  are  to  enter  the  walks  of  active  life  without  enjoying 
the  privileges  of  the  higher  institutions  :  while  their  own  privileges 
would  be  greatly  enlarged  and  their  school  studies  enriched  and 
liberalized  by  coming  in  contact,  even  at  school,  with  all  the  liber- 
alizing influences  of  an  institution  in  which  the  foundation  for 
higher  instruction  was  being  laid  by  a  portion  of  the  pupils.  Such  a 
school  should  be  distinctly  a  school^  and  should  never  aim  at  being 
a  college  —  for  a  college  filled  with  boys  is  of  all  institutions  the 
most  worthless  —  but  it  might  and  would  be  to  boys  during  the 
period  of  boyhood  all  that  the  college  ought  to  be  to  them  after- 
wards in  the  period  of  young  manhood.  I  think  that  boys  would 
not  hate  such  a  school.  And  in  such  a  school  courses  of  study 
might  be  formed,  with  great  economy  of  time  and  labor,  to  meet  all 
the  varying  wants  of  different  classes  of  recipients. 

The  example  of  Europe  is  sometimes  quoted  in  favor  of  speciali- 
zation, but  the  educational  example  of  Europe  is  far  more  likely  to 
mislead  than  to  guide  us.  We  may  safely  imitate  the  thorough- 
ness of  European  teaching —  I  wish  we  had  begun  in  our  schools 
to  have  a  conception  of  such  thoroughness  —  but  in  imitating  the 
form  of  European  institutions  we  shall,  nine  cases  in  ten,  be  only 
copying  antiquated  errors  belonging  to  social  systems  radically 
difl[erent  from  our  own.  The  High  School  education  for  American 
boys  and  girls  should  be  of  uniform  type  and  quality,  and  ought 
with  minor  modifications  to  prepare  them  equally  well  for  an  Amer- 
ican college  or  an  American  scientific  school ;  or  stopping  short  of 
that,  prepare  them  really  well  for  active  American  life.  The 
college  and  the  scientific  school  themselves  should  be  only  the 
higher  classes  of  the  High  School.  By  and  by  perhaps  we  shall 
have  a  university  to  crown  the  whole. 

I  know  what  obstacles  exist  to  the  realization  of  any  such  scheme 
as  this.     On  the  one  hand  are  the  old-world  pedantries  which  still 


^.RSP4- 


16 


cling  about  onr  college,  but  which  now  that  its  management  is 
passing  more  and  more  into  young  and  energetic  hands  we  may 
look  to  see  happily  removed  ;  at  the  other  extreme  are  the  lamen- 
table shortcomings  and  deficiencies  of  our  primary  and  grammar 
schools.  No  reform  in  High  School  teaching  can  be  successful 
unless  it  is  accompanied  by  a  searching  examination  into  these. 
But  this  is  not  a  topic  pertinent  to  this  occasion. 

I  have  thus,  Mr.  Chairman,  indicated,  at  the  risk,  perhaps,  of 
seeming  to  some  little  better  than  a  Utopian  dreamer,  some  of 
the  directions  in  which  I  look  to  see  popular  education  expand,  if 
we  are  ever  to  have  a  popular  education  worthy  of  our  age  and  our 
nation.  Utopian  my  words  may  well  seem,  if  we  compare  them 
with  the  present  results  of  our  school  system.  Our  school  system 
to-day,  when  we  compare  the  sums  lavished  upon  it,  with  the  ac- 
tual results  it  produces,  seems  to  me  a  monument  of  wasted  power. 
I  know  what  an  inestimable  gain  it  is  even  to  have  it.  I  know 
that  improvement  in  it  must  be  slow,  and  must  keep  pace  and  can 
never  far  outstrip  the  general  progress  of  the  community  ;  but  now 
it  seems  to  me  to  lag  behind  that  progress.  And  it  is  an  encourag- 
ing sign  that  as  the  questions  which  have  so  long  agitated  us,  are 
one  by  one  being  set  at  rest,  and  the  noise  of  conflict  is  dying  in 
the  distance,  the  great  permanent  interest  of  education,  an  inter- 
est on  which  the  very  salvation  of  our  free  institutions  depends,  is 
coming  so  prominently  into  the  foreground.  I  trust  discussion 
will  not  cease  till  all  the  shortcomings  of  our  schools  have  been 
brought  to  light,  and  a  remedy  found  for  every  evil  that  afflicts 
them.  And  in  taking  measures  for  the  improvement  of  the  partic- 
ular schools  you  are  considering,  allow  me  to  hope  that  you  will 
take  no  step  which  shall  contribute  in  any  degree  to  the  intensify- 
ing of  that  foolish  and  unphilosophical  antagonism  which  is  some- 
times set  up  between  the  claims  of  Science  and  the  claims  of 
Literature,  and  by  so  doing  give  countenance  to  an  illiber- 
ality  which  is  miscalled  "  liberal "  on  the  one  hand,  or  to  an 
empiricism  which  is  miscalled  "  practical  "  on  the  other. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  AT  LOS  ANGELES 

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